And answers from the Class Matters book:

Invisible Walls

What keeps working-class people out of coalitions?

By Linda Stout

The wall of language:

I speak two languages: one I use in my own community and family and one I have had to learn in order to
communicate with formally educated middle-class people ... We must begin to honor each other's languages
and accept different voices if we are going to build a winning movement ...

The wall of assumptions of knowledge:

People often wrongly assume that others have the same understanding and information about a problem or issue
that they do ... When I first became active in the peace movement, I always left meetings feeling stupid because
the group seemed to share information that I did not have ...

The wall of simple logistics:

The wall of meeting format and organizational structure:

Structure is critical to people's ability to participate and feel included ... In many groups, a lack of
explicit structure means that only those people who feel comfortable talking (usually people with privilege)
will do so. It's not that low-income people have nothing to say, we just feel that we don't have a way in ...